Orchestration describes the automated arrangement, coordination, and management of complex computer systems, middleware, and services.

This usage of orchestration is often discussed in the context of service oriented architecture, virtualization, provisioning, Converged Infrastructure and dynamic datacenter topics.

It defines the policies and service levels through automated workflows, provisioning, and change management. This creates an application-aligned infrastructure that can be scaled up or down based on the needs of each application. Orchestration also provides centralized management of the resource pool, including billing, metering, and chargeback for consumption.

With the popularity of cloud computing it is now necessary to understand Service Orchestration in the context of this paradigm. Workflows and processes are used in different domains. At one level there are inter-company business processes and at another level there are processes to get the wide area network operational. To keep matters simple, we will define an orchestrator as the entity that manages complex cross domain (system, enterprise, firewall) processes and handle exceptions. Since an orchestrator is valuable in the fulfillment, assurance as well as billing processes, in their most advanced service aware incarnations should be capable of adjustments based on feedback from monitoring tools. At the most basic level an orchestrator is a human. The main difference between a workflow automation and orchestration is that work flows are processed and completed as processes within a single domain.

Cloud Service orchestration therefore is the

• Composing of Architecture, Tools and Processes by humans to deliver a defined service
• Stitching of software and hardware components together to deliver a defined Service
• Connecting and automating of work flows when applicable to deliver a defined service

It is critical in the delivery of cloud services because

• Cloud is all about scale – automated work flows are essential
• Cloud Service delivery includes fulfillment assurance and billing
• Cloud Services delivery entails work flows in various technical and business domains

AWS’s Simple Workflow Service

A growing number of applications are relying on asynchronous and distributed processing, with scalability of the application as the primary motivation. By designing autonomous distributed components, developers get the flexibility to deploy and scale out parts of the application independently as load increases.

AWS has announced Simple Workflow Service to build scalable and resistant applications:

·         Health, Insurance, Finance Applications

·         BI Applications

·         Management Services (Rightscale)

Business Drivers

·         Faster time to market

·         Cost effective ways to build and track processing steps that run at different times

o   Efficient Execution

·         Better co-ordination

How Amazon SWF will help?

·         Fully Managed Service

·         To structure the various processing steps in an application as “tasks” that drive work in distributed applications

·         To manage task execution dependencies, scheduling, and concurrency based on a developer’s application logic

·         It stores tasks, reliably dispatches them to application components, tracks their progress, and keeps their latest state.

Using the Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWF), you can implement distributed, asynchronous applications as workflows. For example, the following graphic depicts a simple e-commerce order processing workflow involving both people and automated processes.

This workflow starts when a customer places an order. It includes four tasks:

1. Verify the order.

2. If the order is valid, charge the customer.

3. If the payment is made, ship the order.

4. If the order is shipped, save the order details.

What is the Pricing?

As part of AWS’s Free Usage Tier, Amazon SWF offers the following each month to new and existing customers:

    1,000 workflow executions can be started at no charge

    10,000 tasks, timers, signals, and markers can be used in aggregate at no charge

    30,000 workflow-days can be used at no charge. A workflow-day refers to each 24-hour period that an execution is either open or retained in Amazon SWF.

Microsoft System Center 2012 – Orchestrator

Orchestrator provides a workflow management solution for the data center. Orchestrator lets you automate the creation, monitoring, and deployment of resources in your environment.

IT administrators perform many tasks and procedures to keep the health of their computing environment up-to-date and their business running. Tasks might include the following diverse activities, for example, new employees require that accounts and resources are configured, a business acquisition requires integrating a system from another vendor, and new hardware requires provisioning. Individual tasks and subtasks are automated, but typically, not the whole process. In addition, the administrators must maintain quality standards and system efficiency. System Center 2012 - Orchestrator can tie disparate tasks and procedures together by using the graphical user-interface Runbook Designer to create reliable, flexible, and efficient end-to-end solutions in the IT environment.

By using Orchestrator, you can carry out the following tasks:

• Automate processes in your data center, regardless of hardware or platform.
• Automate your IT operations and standardize best practices to improve operational efficiency.
• Connect different systems from different vendors without having to know how to use scripting and programming languages.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestration_%28computing%29

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh420344.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh420377.aspx

http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/swf/

http://aws.amazon.com/swf/

http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2012/02/Amazon-Simple-Workflow-Service.html

Related articles

• General Cloud Computing Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Public Cloud Use-Cases (clean-clouds.com)
• Recent Trends in Cloud Services Adoption (clean-clouds.com)
• Trends For Cloud Service Providers and Traditional IT Vendors in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)

Some common examples of vertical markets:

• Automotive
• Banking
• Consumer
• Education
• Energy
  • Oil and Gas
• Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)
• Financial (Finance)
• Food and beverage
• Government
• Healthcare
• Insurance
• Manufacturing
• Media
• Online
• Real estate
• Religion
• Retail
• Technology
• Telecommunications
• Transportation (Travel)

A horizontal market is a market which meets a given need of a wide variety of industries, rather than a specific one.

In technology, horizontal markets consist of customers that share a common need that exists in many or all (vertical) industries. For example, customers that need to purchase computer security services or software exist in such varied industries as finance, healthcare, government, etc. Together, these customers constitute the security horizontal market. Other examples of horizontal markets include computer storage, accounting, desktop graphics, computer-aided design, sales force automation, and human resources.

Comparison with horizontal markets

A vertical market is a market which meets the needs of a particular industry: for example, a piece of equipment used only by semiconductor manufacturers. It is also known as a niche market.^[1]

A horizontal market is a market which meets a given need of a wide variety of industries, rather than a specific one: for example, word processing software^[2] or machine-to-machine technologies. On occasion a horizontal market can be highly specialized at the same time, for instance consider the market for converting mainframe databases developed with the tools of a particular company. The market for such a database conversion service might involve many vertical markets (aerospace, manufacturing, banking, etc) but nevertheless be labelled “niche” if the database technology is technically obsolete and no longer mainstream.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_market

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_market

• Most enterprises still enter into contracts to use IaaS services.
• User’s attitudes are evolving rapidly within limits.
• More Cloud Options: As the market continues to open up, more options are sure to appear, and organizations will need to choose providers concentrating in their needs.

Casual (mid-market, SMB) buyer

• Cloud first approach to IT
• SMB and micro-business will continue to be at the forefront of cloud adoption.
• More interested in unified communications and remote desktop support.
• Small businesses will face less workforce resistance to cloud adoption

Ceremonial(Traditional) Buyer

• Extensive move to a cloud model is not practical
• Compliance Regulations for back-end legacy systems is a road block

Open Source in Cloud

• More important with the announcement of OpenStack project by Rackspace and NASA.
• OpenStack will unleash a cottage industry of cloud service providers

Government

• Acceleration of the use of cloud computing at all levels and help increase the trust in cloud services for the enterprises.

Related articles

• SaaS Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Recent Trends in Cloud Services Adoption (clean-clouds.com)
• Public Cloud Use-Cases (clean-clouds.com)
• Public Cloud Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Private Cloud Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Trends in Cloud Computing 2012 (clean-clouds.com)

• Emphasis on Cloud Security
• Governance and compliance will gain more visibility
• Emphasis on High Availability, stronger SLAs with better coverage for liabilities, managed support services, etc. Features like HA, Strong SLAs, etc. will become standard features in any infrastructure offering.
• Sales, delivery and support models to target larger SMB customers
• Cloud Computing Will Grow Quickly in China.
• North American Midsize Businesses Cite Cloud Intentions
• Cloud Investments Not a Priority for Majority of Enterprises” respectively
• The cloud storage market is also evolving rapidly.
• Amazon will extend its lead over others with the most comprehensive offering on IaaS – competitors will try to carve out their own niche.
• Microsoft will do just enough on office suite to keep competition at bay
• Increased integration among cloud offerings, network services and user devices.
• Explicit recognition of and support for federation of service elements among various cloud providers.

Traditional IT vendors

• Aggressive acquisition strategy by CA, VMware, Redhat, Dell, etc.
• Traditional webhosts repositioning themselves as cloud infrastructure providers
• Traditional enterprise collaboration vendors embracing clouds
• Virtualization is growing both within internal data centers

Related articles

• SaaS Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Recent Trends in Cloud Services Adoption (clean-clouds.com)
• Trends in Cloud Computing 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Public Cloud Use-Cases (clean-clouds.com)
• Private Cloud Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)

Certification schemes will take time to emerge.

• Confidentiality and Auditability
• Performance, Reliability and Availability

More concerns on Reliability and availability after Amazon’s glitch

• Loss of control
• Scaling
• Vendor Lock-in
• Legal
• Forensics

Related articles

• SaaS Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Public Cloud Use-Cases (clean-clouds.com)
• Trends in Cloud Computing 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Recent Trends in Cloud Services Adoption (clean-clouds.com)

1. The adoption of cloud-based applications and infrastructures is at a very nascent stage in India.
2. Existing infrastructure service providers have started taking initial steps to provide cloud-based services, but these are limited in terms of functionality, options and vertical industries.
3. Companies in India are still skeptical about deciding whether to opt for cloud-based solutions. Cloud is still synonymous with software as a service (SaaS) in India, with limited understanding and adoption of infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
4. The adoption of virtualization for production workloads in Indian organizations has been very low, compared with similar organizations in the U.S. and Europe; however, adoption is expected to increase rapidly.
5. Asian Markets To See Massive Expansion in Cloud Adoption

Source: Gartner : Answers to Key Questions on Cloud Adoption in India, June 2011

Related articles

• SaaS Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Public Cloud Use-Cases (clean-clouds.com)
• Public Cloud Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)

–      Demand for anytime, on-the-go accessibility will be a major force in shaping cloud computing.

• Ubiquity of influential mobile devices and cheap bandwidth, coupled with today’s “Agile” business environment, means that the demand for accessibility will continue to drive cloud adoption.

–      Integrated “stack-as-a-service” delivery models is expected to grow.

–      Better consolidation of cloud providers to achieve economies of scale

–      A lack of staff skills to support a private cloud implementation

–      Analytics is moving to the cloud at a faster pace than we expected, but mainly in the private cloud for large enterprises. Analytics requires voluminous data movement, which is an Achilles’ heel for public clouds.

–      Many gaps in vertical offerings for cloud apps in industries like education and healthcare and gaps

–      Cloud computing grows slowly but surely and keeps IT on its toes

–      U.S. government agencies moved at least one workflow to the cloud following the new requirement that U.S. federal agencies adopt a “cloud-first” policy

–      Data security concerns do not change significantly after adopting cloud computing

–      Nearly all businesses boost improvements in IT performance after cloud adoption

–      Information access to multiple computing devices is the top driver

–      Existing Storage Continues to Be Used: the notion of moving all their data to the cloud is not feasible.

–      Disaster Recovery to Cloud Becomes a Viable Option

–      DR From the Cloud May Become a Requirement-a new breed of solutions that backup SaaS data either locally or to an alternate provider.

–      Certain business application can be moved entirely to the cloud, saving the administration and maintenance of their hardware/software platforms on-site. Businesses are looking for tools to make this migration viable, particularly the IT-strapped organizations that can benefit the most.

–      Big data workloads will force many companies to consider these alternatives to traditional databases, and cloud deployment models will simplify the rollout. Look for vendors providing supported NoSQL solutions.

–      Solid-State Disk Storage Tiers in the Cloud: By offering high-performance tiers of storage that are SSD-based (mainly NAND flash), cloud providers will be able to address the needs for predictable and faster application response times.

–      With data storage still commanding a per-GB operating expense in the cloud, deduplication and compression technologies have become rather ubiqitous in helping minimize costs.

–      More Use of the Cloud for Analytics

–      While many companies will adopt clouds in 2012, others may still wait and ponder well past 2012.

–      The Cloud Outages will Propel the Organizations to Forage for Better Quality Service Providers.

–      The reliability factor is a decisive player in the success of a cloud implementation across corporate houses. People find it hard to transgress from the notion that Public clouds are less secure than the Private clouds.

–      The Cloud Bursts as the Global Economic Crisis Swell

–      The growth of mobile Cloud: Not only do a greater number of the public now operate their social and professional lives via mobile devices and tablet PCs this is only going to speed up the assimilation of the mobile Cloud and of course the demand for faster, more user friendly and storage happy applications – something the Cloud can deliver on in bucket loads.

–      The evolution of Cloud security: area of development that is accelerating at breakneck speed so much so that the Obama administration delivered a Federal Cloud Computing Strategy report identifying $20bn in spending (one quarter of the government’s total IT budget) that could be moved to the cloud.

–      A mobile-enabled workplace revolution: Cloud is now facilitating a faster, smoother way to send and store information than ever before.

–      Delivering quick and well coordinated cloud services would be the prime focus of managed cloud providers in the upcoming year. With agile cloud solutions not only will cloud providers be able to grab the attention of other organizations that are not on cloud but would also become more efficient in delivering the best services at the end of the day.

–      Critical concerns (both real and perceived) like (1) security, (2) privacy, (3) SLA and (4) compliance also remain – like credit card usage on net objections will slowly go away – but tipping point will not be 2012.

–      Neither cost saving nor flexibility is the primary driver for cloud adoption

–      High data storage and transfer costs, in particular, make the cloud unattractive for the very applications on which enterprises spend most of their IT budgets — the “core” or “mission-critical” ones. As cloud providers try to tap those more lucrative opportunities, they will be forced to significantly drive down cloud data prices.

–      A mobile workforce demands decision making on the move. Business Intelligence on the cloud will facilitate senior management to go mobile.

–      Ondemand ERP is a trending word in the industry. Many businesses are automating their processes through cloud-based ERP solutions. Moreover, since cloud-based ERP applications have become robust and light, it has enabled employees who travel frequently to access these applications using thin clients.

–      Acquisitions will be about filling out portfolios, less on customer footprints: Acquisition strategies will focus less on gaining customer footprint and more on what technologies are needed to fill out the portfolios of telcos, social media firms, large systems integrations and managed service providers to help them compete.

–      Cloud adoption will continue to trend upward.

–      As developers realize the benefits to moving the heavy lifting required by their applications to the cloud, they will move them over to reduce the demand placed on users machines. This will increase the number of systems that are capable of running their applications, and could also lead to increased performance of the application.

–      Compression techniques will be important in lowering storage costs.

–      Large cloud databases will centralize huge amounts of information.

Related articles

• SaaS Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Trends in Cloud Computing 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Private Cloud Trends in 2012 (clean-clouds.com)
• Recent Trends in Cloud Services Adoption (clean-clouds.com)
• Public Cloud Use-Cases (clean-clouds.com)

•       More startups in the PaaS space focusing on different language stacks because of cost reduction and business agility.

•       Forrester is predicting this category will grow from $0.82 B in 2011 to $11.91 B in 2020.

•       Forrester is predicting this category will grow from $2.94 B in 2011 to $4.78 B in 2020.

•       Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is the next big opportunity

•       PaaS will be used to reduce multiplatform cost and, maintenance & support cost and to achieve high resource utilization.

•       To get time-boxed projects done at a low total cost

•       IT organizations will have positive experience using a PaaS service and will  be increasing its use.

BPaaS

•       Forrester is predicting this category will grow from $0.53 B in 2011 to $10.02 B in 2020

•       Mainstreaming Continues – Everything “As a Service” The movement toward mainstreaming the cloud has been validated by popular services from major consumer players and continues to grow the cloud share of technology spend.

IaaS

•       Expected or realized cost savings of 30%–40% or Higher

•       Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) takes off but gets complicated

•       IaaS market leaders aren’t immune to these cloud computing trends. Increased competition and pressure to grow profits will motivate them to expand into the SaaS and PaaS markets.

Related articles

• Amazon DynamoDB: NoSQL in Amazon Public Cloud (clean-clouds.com)

•       Big Data and increasing adoption of tools like Hadoop made BI and Analytics.

•       Collaboration and Social tools

•       Integration services as a crucial part of IT buying checklist

•       Adoption of services will be by informal (mid-market, SMB) buyer

•       SaaS applications beyond CRM, human resources and procurement technologies, and into business process technologies for tasks like payroll and billing, healthcare claims processing, trade settlements, clinical data management and tech support.

•       Forrester is predicting this category will grow from $21.21 B in 2011 to $132.57B in 2020

•       Software-as-a-service (SaaS) explodes, expands, and combines

•       Mobile SaaS

•       Application specific Communities

•       Software as a Service builds on email and collaboration and expands towards line of business applications and IT infrastructure

•       Many organizations already employ SaaS providers, and numbers will only increase in 2012 as companies come to recognize the disadvantages of on-site software. As a result, companies are likely to make their SaaS options more secure and more customizable.

•       As cloud infrastructure becomes standard, users are seeking more complex application development in the cloud. This year, applications are likely to become more common and to feature more capabilities.

•       Customers seek more value from cloud services, the dominant cloud business model will move away from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and toward Software as a Service (SaaS)

•       The adoption of Cloud Computing/Saas and related technologies will accelerate in 2012 and encompass increased adoption by SMB companies.

•       Human Resource Management and Client Relationship Management (CRM) are operational areas which increasing numbers of companies will move into the Cloud in 2012.