Who is taking the lead to the Clouds? Telcos, ISPs, MSPs or Enterprises?

If a book seller like Amazon can succeed as a cloud provider, why are telecoms so slow to get into the game? 

 

I suspect the barriers are more cultural than technical. Telecoms seem cautious to jump into new markets. The Cloud is attracting some big industry players, but that’s not the real reason. Competition is not the fear.  It is the memories of the dotcom crash and how telecoms didn’t succeed in the Internet services space.  ISPs and MSPs filled that void.

Cloud is a pure network infrastructure play, and telecoms should feel comfortable there; it’s where they are making their living. What’s more, telecom service providers know a great deal about managing software in big data centers – so the stars are aligned. 

However, this management software is leveling the playing field.  These ISPs and MSPs are building out the data centers just like their telecom brothers.  And larger Enterprises are comfortable running their own data centers too.  The Cloud looks like a data center, acts like a data center, even smells like one.

Application Performance Monitoring is the key to controlling the Cloud 

Great progress has been made in the development of robust tools and APIs to support the cloud, so there’s no reason why a Telco, ISP or MSP can’t enter the cloud business in a few short months – and do it affordably.

One key enabler is application performance monitoring (APM). You simply must have real-time visibility into the health and capacity of web servers, databases, application servers, virtual and cloud environments so you can turn up more infrastructures before the end user experience degrades.  If an Enterprise has an IT system worth protecting, they are (should be) using APM.

In the case of offloading cloud services, one can connect directly to Amazon Web Services (AWS) service using their APIs.  These APIs allow you to collect full performance metrics and APM can tell you what’s happening in the Amazon cloud infrastructure.

The beauty of the latest APM solutions is they can discover applications in the Amazon cloud, analyze the metrics, and automatically trigger actions such as restarting or stopping an Amazon server when certain capacities or thresholds are met.

Automation of cloud provisioning is a great leap forward regardless if it’s outsourced or if you are rolling out your own private cloud.  The whole purpose of cloud and virtual computing is to take advantages of economies of scale. In a similar way, APM’s ability to automate resource provisioning delivers additional “human" economies of scale. Imagine what a burden it would be for a system administrator to login and manually turn resources up or down. And if your cloud environment scales to dozens or hundreds of cloud instances, productivity would suffer.

Building Your Own Private Cloud and Employing Virtual Environments

Leveraging Amazon or another cloud provider’s infrastructure is certainly the fastest way to get into the cloud market. But longer term, most will build their own infrastructure and use software such as VMware, Hyper-V or Citrix XenServer.  

Similar to Amazon cloud control, APM software supports the automated provisioning of virtual machines, with only slight variations. Basically, the user creates a script for a particular “action" in the APM. If the number of active sessions on a Tomcat server shoots up, the APM can initiate the action on VMware to restart a virtual machine. Other capacity thresholds could trigger actions.  CPU utilization going over 80%, memory running low, or disk space coming close to full capacity.

Another nice thing about the latest APM software is it’s completely user configurable. Based on historical trending, you can set capacities to manage and control 50+ out-of-the-box apps and servers in your cloud environment – all from one system console.

Conclusion

We know the systems and networking people grumble about the Cloud.  We know C Level people want more productivity and think the Cloud can be an answer without knowing what it take.  We know end user apps and bandwidth demands will increase.  We also know the cloud is a freight train picking up speed and those who get in game early will learn some valuable lessons, will realize the economies of scale and save money.

Looking back, APM tools have made great progress over the years.  Remember the “self-healing networks" that IBM promoted in the early to mid 2000s? Application Performance Monitoring was a key technology behind that.   And the difference today is that it costs in the tens of thousands of dollars instead of millions.

Whether you leverage Amazon’s cloud, a partner’s cloud, or one you build yourself, an APM solution coupled with automated resource provisioning could save you months of development time and get you into the cloud faster so you can gain experience and beat your rivals to market.  And we don't mind who you are.  ManageEngine software can handle the Telco, ISP, MSP or the Enterprise.

Net Neutrality and the role of Network Management

Update:  1/8/2015

About this time last year, the US Court of Appeals took down the FCC Net Neutrality order. Now the FCC is looking at monkeying with the rules again.  The FCC claims they want to reclassify ISPs under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which means the power to regulate them as a public utility, which potentially means the ability to tax them.

Update:  7/20/2012 http://www.humanevents.com/2012/07/15/ron-and-rand-paul-launch-a-crusade-for-internet-freedom/


Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) and his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have always been prominent champions of libertarian philosophy. They have chosen Internet freedom as a new focus for their efforts, publishing a manifesto called “The Technology Revolution.” This crusade will rival Rep. Paul’s long quest to “end the Fed” as a top priority for his Campaign for Liberty organization.

As even the most casual acquaintance with Ron Paul or his organization would confirm, putting anything up there next to the Federal Reserve on his top policy shelf is a pretty big deal. Paul still wants to end the Fed, but he wants to make sure a free Internet survives it.
“The Technology Revolution” is a broadside against Net Neutrality, which the Campaign for Liberty manifesto describes as “government acting as arbiter and enforcer of what it deems to be ‘neutral.’” The architects of Net Neutrality are said to be “masters at hijacking the language of freedom and liberty to disingenuously push for more centralized control.” Terms like openness, Internet freedom, and competition are twisted into euphemisms for government control and the dissipation of property rights. It’s reminiscent of the way “social justice” has become a cover for endless injustice, perpetrated by the government against disfavored groups and individuals.


Update: 1/12/2012 Officials see limited government role in Internet governance

Unrelated to Net Neutrality, but a statement from Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Larry Strickling told an audience at the Brookings Institution that Government will stay out of the way.

"Each challenge to the multi-stakeholder model has implications for Internet governance throughout the world," he said. "When parties ask us to overturn the outcomes of these processes, no matter how well-intentioned the request, they are providing ammunition to other countries who would like to see governments take control of the Internet."

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20120111_1140.php?oref=rss?zone=NGtoday

Note:  Originally written in the Summer 2010.  Since then, the Federal Communications Commission registered its Net neutrality rules with the Office of Management and Budget, which is the next step in making the new regulations official.

In some corners, current discussions surrounding the issue of Net Neutrality have alarming overtones, with people concerned about the possibility of the government stepping in to regulate the Internet. This can be seen as a free market versus regulation issue that could hinder the ability of Service Providers to tunnel content to users and tier services for the pay to play. In short, many people think that regulation will cause the Internet more harm than good. Part of the problem is that terms haven’t really been fully defined, leading to general confusion on many points.  Or should it be defined at all?

Content providers want the access... but speed and choice already exist for most people, and at reasonable costs. Not for all, though.  For example, one of our branch offices in rural NJ, the connection speed could be faster (1.5Meg DSL) and choice of providers is limited. Those living in bigger population centers, however, will have many more options.
   
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) supports neutrality in practice, but is opposed to open-ended grants of regulatory authority to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  They were in the forefront of those applauding the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this past April 2009 limiting the FCC's authority to punish Comcast for interfering with its subscribers' use of BitTorrent. While not condoning Comcast's behavior in any way, the EFF thinks that the FCC should most certainly not have regulatory powers broad enough to restrict or regulate the Internet at the Commissioners' whim.

Then the industry starts to jockey for position.  Consider this sequence of events: Vonage VoIP was blocked a while back. Apple iPhone blocks Google Voice, then AT&T tells Apple to remove the block; AT&T allows Skype, Apple announces that the Google CEO will resign his position on Apple's board.  Companies launch opinions on their position, lobbying efforts in DC intensify and back room meetings take place.

Service Provider, Verizon wants to tier services to make more money versus their argument to the build-out investment; Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg attacks the idea that carriers should be considered "dumb pipes." This "understates the role of sound network management practices,” he said. 

Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski wants to "...ensure that Internet access providers are transparent about the network management practices they implement."

From my vantage point as a network management software vendor, Network Management for Equipment Providers and Communications Service Providers is a closed community. It can be their competitive edge and managed services is big business because this is how companies literally run their businesses. Besides all the network devices and applications, it is the Network Management software that is running the business.  Network and Application Management software processes events and faults in the attempt to proactively maintain network uptime and Quality of Service for their customers.  This software is the tool that they use to look at bandwidth utilization, meaning who is consuming the internet traffic and what it flowing through those pipes, meaning what type of traffic is being transmitted and what applications are taking up the resources. Performance optimization is the name of the game.  Service Providers use this data in a variety of others ways besides the troubleshooting aspect.  It’s used for resource and capacity planning, for billing and accounting reasons and even operationally for network configuration and provisioning.

Whether the company manages and controls their own network or outsources it, they connect to the Service Provider, and network management ensures business continuity.  The Service Provider is best qualified to run their network in terms of high availability and performance and they are able to do this through network management, traffic management and quality of service design.  I really doubt Service Providers will want to comply with the FCC transparent management reporting requirements.

Google is of the opinion that service providers will be tempted to block or restrict the on-ramps. Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight.

Telecommunication equipment providers are not in favor of net neutrality regulations, which would apply to both wireless and wireline telecom companies, claiming in essence that a free marketplace is crucial to maintaining an open and innovative Internet.

"If the FCC takes a prescriptive approach to new regulations, then it could place itself in the position of being the final arbiter of what products and services will be allowed on the Internet." in a letter, signed by Cisco Systems, Alcatel-Lucent, Corning, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia. And that, many people agree, just isn’t a good idea.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wants to adopt rules requiring phone and cable companies to give equal treatment to all broadband traffic.  But all content sites are not equal, some, like streaming audio/video app You Tube or online gamer World of Warcraft are pipe hogs.  At the consumer level or small business level, it is not much of an issue today. FIOS is $50 per month, Optimum Online Ultra is $50 per month which is plenty of bandwidth for most applications.  So we are talking possible implication for medium and large business.  Google being a large business, I suppose they could buy telecom gear and build out or acquire a Service Provider and control their destiny. But that sort of thing has been tried before. There’s a word for it – monopoly.

Content providers want to ensure equal access. What if Google, Amazon, or Facebook were able to be the Top Tier content providers and get the priority traffic routed to them?  Imagine if a Web2.0, Cloud-based content provider, was not part of the top tier tunneled providers. Smaller content players can’t afford to have the big players carve up the Internet space to their advantage. 

Because internet traffic can be routed, analyzed and prioritized, there could be privacy issues.  Service Provider and Content companies are already pushing relevant advertising to users in the name of more revenue.

If you step back and realize that Dial-up and Frame Relay was only 15 years ago.  The internet is young.  Regulation will only aid and abet the censors or politicians and will create two sides of the equation.  One side will win, the other will lose.  The Internet must be free of any regulation.