CloudStorageStrategy.com welcomes OpSource CEO Treb Ryan for an in-depth interview on cloud computing, from the perspective of the service provider. NOTE: OpSource is a customer of Mezeo Software, the underwriter of this blog.
What are the opportunities you see in the cloud computing space, both for OpSource and your customers, and what impact has the downturn had on this?
It's interesting, but when people talk about cloud computing, they immediately go to the downturn and pricing - and cost being the big driver. There's no question that cloud computing is cost effective, and it's accelerating adoption many times over, but what we're really seeing is something much more fundamental - a generation of users who are entering the workforce who've been using cloud computing all along; they've grown up on the Internet, and their interface to technology has always been through the Internet.
As a result, this "Cloud Generation" has clear expectations of how technology should work:
1) it should be immediately available,
2) you do a search and get going,
3) it should be very flexible,
4) you should have ubiquitous access - anytime, anywhere,
5) sharing and collaboration - the expectation to collaborate and share anything they are working on.
This is not a generation which distinguishes between work data and home data - like my generation did. They've grown up with the concept of APIs and communities that grow around them; for instance, we see programmers who have grown up with Google and Facebook APIs, and now they expect that kind of thing in their work applications as well. So they're coming into the workforce and driving change in the workplace. They see technologies like client-server applications or hard-coded storage arrays pretty much the same way my generation saw green screens, mainframes, and mini-computers - as dated, inflexible, technology - hard to use, without nearly the power of cloud-based systems. So they have the day-to-day experience of the "consumer cloud" which they're now driving into business applications as well.
To the Cloud Generation of programmers this means anything they can interact with on the Cloud they can program to through APIs. The idea of infrastructure being an item that can be addressed as part of the application, instead of something the application lays on top of, is a radical concept. It has allowed not only for innovative applications, but also for true elastic computing making the Cloud environment even more flexible.
Great Cloud offerings have great communities around them. This is the aspect of Cloud computing that is so often missed - and even scoffed at - by the IT folks who think it's all about virtualization. One of the biggest gripes about Cloud computing is that support is done by the Community and not the vendor. While most will agree that far more proactive vendor support is necessary for Cloud computing, Community support is just as critical. For questions of configuration and usage tricks, the Community is a far better source of information than some call center employee with limited access. Often the Community devises more innovative solutions than the vendor ever could. And in addition to support, the Community can create third-party add-ins that make the Cloud even more useful.
The downturn has accelerated adoption from the top down as well.
We're seeing executives who have become enamored with this idea of the cloud - because of the ability to turn capital expenditures into operational expenses - and are pushing cloud computing into their organizations. The CEO of one of our customers went so far as to tell his technical people - "now can you finally start using the cloud so I can get the board off my back?"
So, for different reasons, we have both top-down and grass-roots support for cloud-based applications, which makes this very interesting to say the least.
Which customer segments do you see leading the way in adoption?
Obviously, our traditional focus has been on ISVs and start-ups coming into Software-as-a-Service, business applications in the cloud, and we're seeing continued adoption of cloud infrastructure by those segments, but what has been interesting is that now that we offer the ability for any company to buy and use cloud infrastructure for any type of application, we're seeing a much broader spread of usage and adoption. Beyond the enterprise we also see widespread adoption by systems integrators, consultants, and VARs - upto 40% of our customer base - all without us targeting that segment at all.
How does OpSource differentiate its cloud offerings from other service providers?
We offer the best of the public cloud, combined with enterpise security and compliance, performance guarantees, and enterprise controls.
For instance, we offer:
- easy online sign-up & purchase with infrastructure provisioning in minutes
- pay by the hour and only for what you use, with no commitment (or purchase a monthly plan for a discount)
- a rich online community to share and collaborate with peers; get third party add-ins, images and configurations
- a web interface plus complete set of APIs
We focus on three different areas:
1) Security and Compliance: we provide a much more secure environment, because Opsource provides every customer with a Virtual Private Cloud within the public Cloud, allowing them to determine their own degree of public Internet connectivity. We also provide:So do you see any links into these large companies where they need to use ITIL for systems management?2) Performance: we offer a multi-tier architecture with guaranteed latency in-between systems, sub-millisecond access time, industry standard technology, like VMware, instead of open-source, because that's where enterprise is comfortable. Our 24/7 suppot also makes a diffence.
- Unique customizable security for firewalls
- VPN administration of all servers
- Unique username/password for each administrator
- Audit logs of all environmental changes
- SAS 70 audited
- 100% uptime SLA
3) Control: today's cloud environment are single user environments, one user name and password, which is fine for individuals, but not so useful for the enterprise. We offer the ability to provision multiple users, do things like cross departmental billing, execute policy based control - which user can do what - and finally link all that back though an API to your existing management systems. So you can control how your users use the cloud same as you do your corporate datacenter.
Absolutely. OpSource has always focused on compliance as a major issue for our SaaS customers, eveything from SAS 70, PCI to European Safe Harbor, and even industry-specific ones like HIPAA, or government-specific certification, but in the cloud, we think about sophisticated management techniques like federated authority and single sign-ons, and things like ITIL - while it's still in its infancy, it's shocking that most providers don't even have the ability to give their customers the critical capability to have more than one person manage the cloud for them - because they have a single user accounts. So while you can institute more sophisticated IT governance regimes like ITIL with the OpSource cloud, we give IT the capability to manage who does what, and track who did what, even if they aren't ready for something like ITIL.
So IT gets to do their own provisioning?
Yes. So you want to know who provisioned what, how much it costs, and we give them that visibility instantly across their entire user community. That way there are no surprises or charges they aren't aware of. It sort of reminds me of the controls I had to put in to alert me to my daughter's texting costs - so I'm aware of the charges before they get out of hand! I just blogged about this issue.
That's why you say that OpSource is what Amazon wants to be when it grows up...
Absolutely.
And that's how you respond to cloud critics - the ones that say that the Cloud is not yet ready for the enterprise.
There are large parts of the cloud that are not yet ready for the enterprise. The cloud is still young, and it would be like asking that first 286 PC to run all of your corporate financials. However, a lot of these issues around enterprise adoption like security and compliance have been addressed, and are being taken care of, so as the cloud becomes more robust, we'll see increased adoption. We're seeing enterprise-level capabilities come to market that did not even exist six months ago.
We have just signed a partnership agreement under which OpSource will resell Gomez's Web performance management solution to our enterprise customers as well as use it to validate and monitor our own cloud performance service level agreements (SLAs). Through this partnership, we'll bring powerful performance monitoring to cloud computing, making it easier and more compelling than ever for enterprises to justify bringing their applications to the cloud.
Do you see infrastructure elements like storage growing now?
For true, full use of the cloud, we have to have the ability to access storage, go though the APIs to get to it, and give our customers a range of storage solutions, including cloud storage based on the specific application or need. We're giving our customers the widest range of choices.
What about agile programming? I heard you use agile methods to improve the customer experience.
Agile programming methods have helped us with not only development, but compliance and security as well. We talk to our customers to see how they are using our cloud offerings though our community, and we learn what's important to them.
We also test our offerings by having two programmers work on the same keyboard - literally - one with the user story - so they can make sure that the customer is getting the exact functionality they need.
It's agile customer service.
Can you tell us a bit about your enthusiasm for composite applications (corporate mashups) and how they help your platform?
Of all the phenomenon in the cloud, we see the need for anytime-anywhere access and the idea that anything I can interact with I should also be able to program to. So when Facebook enthusiasts start working in the enteprise, they bring their enthusiasm for integration as well.
So we see things in the cloud like direct access to the infrastructure as part of the application, which allows for all sorts of flexibility and robust usage.
We see real-time reporting applications of every kind you can imagine. I myself am addicted to checking on everything that's coming out of our billing and customer systems tied into our Salesforce tabs. So I'm always checking on the business in real-time via my iPhone.
I say this a lot, but integrating SaaS is a huge issue for today's enterprise. OpSource Connect can help SaaS companies -- of any size -- overcome integration hurdles and break out of the SaaS-only box. This speeds up adoption of SaaS in larger enterprise environments, opening the door for on-demand companies to cultivate business with large systems integrators. Plus, I'd say we're the only company providing Web operations from the ground up, addressing operational infrastructure, application management, and business operations. Today, integrations are expensive and one-to-one. For instance, while you can currently integrate your application with Google Maps as a composite application, OpSource Connect lets you integrate your app with many others, using just one platform. You can integrate your application with, for example, SAP, salesforce.com, Intuit QuickBooks, NetSuite, and a host of other SaaS and legacy applications.
Everything is much more dynamic today, and programmers expect that.
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