Tarry Singh on Cloud Computing and Virtualization

About six months ago Tarry Singh, founder and real-time analyst of the research company Avastu, discussed with us his thoughts on enterprise IT and virtualization. We also spoke to Tarry about virtualization security in June. To continue on our trend of hot topics, we got an update from the professional blogger on the evolution of virtualization and how cloud computing influences virtualization.

StackSafe: Has your view of virtualization and its affect on IT operations changed since we last spoke?

Tarry Singh: Virtualization has evolved tremendously since we last spoke. Virtualization spending/expenditure is expected to not only increase in deployment but also in other core areas such has compliance (SOX, HIPAA, EUDPD, etc) and obviously security.

In fact while talking to most security vendors I have come to understand that many deployments will be taking testing, control, security, compliance very much into consideration when deploying virtualization.

Obviously a lot also has changed in the vendor space since Citrix and Microsoft have come in strongly and in very near future we will have a spaghetti-virtual infrastructure where you’ll find all kinds of hypervisors in a typical data center. This is also called a typical “Internal Cloud”, although it is far less mature than the Cloud Computing as the industry expects it to be.

StackSafe: What do you think about Amazon’s EC2? What can companies learn from their successes or mistakes?

Tarry Singh: I think Amazon has touched the most exciting part of the whole consolidation part and it is the “pay-as-you-go” world. Virtualization is only addressing the asset management part of the whole equation and it is not being able to do it adequately, it was never meant to do that anyway. So you saw the emergence of all the other vendors such as Testing, Lab Management, Charge back, Life Cycle Management, the list can go on and on. This tremendously defeats the whole consolidation initiative, eventually we all end up spending more. So while you are in the technology refresh phase of your IT infrastructure why not do it right and also get charged for what you actually use?

While it might seem all hunky-dory in the Cloud world, it still has its challenges. A lot has to change. AI spoke about Cloud Security in my “Virtualization: Shift Happens” keynote some time back and it needs to be addressed before we move on to the Clouds. Availability is obviously a big issue. Amazon has not been the only one to have seen glitches in its Cloud but several other vendors such as Google, SalesForce, XCalibre have gone through some rough patches as they all race for the Cloud Computing market.

Virtualization has evolved tremendously since we last spoke. Virtualization spending/expenditure is expected to not only increase in deployment but also in other core areas such as compliance (SOX, HIPAA, EUDPD, etc) and obviously security.

StackSafe: What is the international view of cloud computing and cloud applications? How does it compare to the U.S.?

Tarry Singh: Cloud Computing, unlike Virtualization has taken up massively across the world. It is suddenly everywhere. If you look at the trend analysis you will see that it took virtualization 4 odd years to get popular, Cloud Computing needed just a few months. Why?

Simply because not only Thomas Friedman, but also other industry giants such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, etc understood that as bandwidths become less of an issue, as Wimax change the way we communicate, and as the world starts to collaborate directly with each other, it is only prudent to listen to this evolution.

Just look at the trend here, clearly Cloud Computing shot up faster since its complemetor did most of the work, which has reached saturation by 2008:

Also increasing interest in these technologies has many Asian countries excited, they will pioneer the adoption of the Cloud Computing.

Cloud Applications already exist. My favorite CloudApp is my personal Google Homepage, my gmail is the most reliable and globally- accessible email program I’ve ever used. So they already are here, we just need to change our mindsets and adopt them in the enterprise as well.

Merrill Lynch estimates Cloud Computing to grow as big as a $100 Bn market, Gartner says that will be spending $3.4 Trillion in the coming 10 years in IT, that is 10% of the estimated market for the infrastructure (IT and non-IT) spending in the coming 10 years. If I were the CIO by then all I would be interested in would be paying my IT bills to some Cloud Grid at agreed intervals.

This is about to change faster than you might think. And we will see our BRIC block (Brazil, Russia, India and China) lead the adoption of Cloud Computing.

StackSafe: How is cloud computing impacting virtualization?

Tarry Singh: Cloud Computing is a larger base, it always has been. Virtualization is a complementary to the Cloud Infrastructure. Its just one of the many building blocks in the Cloud Computing Infrastructure. We will have all kinds of virtualization (multi-vendor) and at all levels (network, processors, storage and memory) within a typical Cloud, whether internal or external, Infrastructure.

So it will just bring down the hype of virtualization a bit and help accelerate its adoption within the enterprise. Cloud Computing may swallow a desktop virtualization, application virtualization market since a typical CloudApp (Application hosted in the Cloud) is all you need and it really doesn’t matter how it’s delivered to you!

While the virtualization market will expand, it will have to be more multi-tenancy aware. And that can only be provided by a robust Cloud Computing Infrastructure.

StackSafe: What are the next steps for the cloud and virtualization? What needs to happen in the industry to move it forward from “hype” to “reality”?

Tarry Singh: Cloud Computing is a natural process and although it may be seen as a hype today, it won’t stop its rapid adoption into the enterprise. Virtualization technologies have matured quickly setting up the stage for Cloud Computing.

The industry needs to obviously adopt it and address issues about the security, availability, ownership, compliance and work harder to embed them in the Cloud Infrastructure because hype or not, it will penetrate at a much faster pace than virtualization.

StackSafe: What is virtualization 4.0?

Tarry Singh: Virtualization 4.0 is actually a maturity level that the convergence of business and IT will have achieved. You might also call it the Unified Cloud Computing Model where the services will be GDM (Global Delivery Model ). My slide below says it all: We need to serve a new generation and we better be smart in doing it.

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Filed Under: Cloud Computing, IT Operations, Interviews, Interviews-Analysts, Interviews-Bloggers, Virtualization