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IBM Impact Cloud Experts

Cloud & application systems experts and thought leaders discuss the impact of Cloud in IT

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Anurag Agrawal29

@kgb1001001 We are seeing that nearly 30% of mid-market firms with avg. employee size of 274 and 4 locations are using/planning to use all 3 types of cloud - Private, Public, Hybrid. How is IBM helping them or can help them become successful.

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Great question.

David Brakoniecki

Great question. Helping might be encouraging them not to create complexity by using all three types of the cloud ...

good questions - making application portability key in hybrid environments.

I see huge oppty for SMB/SME for @IBMcloud team bc they can automate lots of things that would have to be "assembled" in AWS

considering the underlying technology is the same, there's potential to deploy your application towards all 3 types of cloud - so build it in the public cloud, test it in the hybrid and use it for production purpose on a private cloud.

David Brakoniecki

@furrier Sure but really at 274 employees these guys should be looking at the SaaS end of cloud rather than the assembly everything end.

Kyle Gene Brown

I can see a lot of value with us letting them start on SoftLayer. It's a low barrier of entry and the content you develop there will carry over to private clouds from IBM

Good question. I think SoftLayer is a critical part of that strategy.

Q3: Can you explain what "Patterns" are? Are they real or just marketing angle; How are they applied? Use cases? Are patterns like "recipes" in devops?

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Can you elaborate in another 140 characters?

Patterns are real, and they are the real value from my point of view.

While there is a similarity between patterns and "recipes", I feel that patterns deliver more value in getting you to a running workload on #pureapp

There's still a large chasm between patterns and reality today. However, it is starting to homogenize.

Kyle Gene Brown

So patterns are different from chef recipes in that the pattern actually includes the runtime of the system that it's deploying like WAS or DB2. They are also composable, which recipes sometimes are, depending on who wrote them.

Kyle Gene Brown

Patterns are certainly real. We have over 40 of them that we sell from IBM and I've worked with dozens of customers actually putting them into production. Add in business partners for 200+ more!

Kyle Gene Brown

The patterns technology itself is very mature. We first introduced way back in 2009! It's well proven and more that just marketing.

Kyle Gene Brown

A good use case is building a complex system with several different middleware pieces like an ESB. That is perfect for building a pattern for installation and config of many VM's in one shot.

Q1: How are top leading companies taking steps to take full advantage of the cloud with complementary systems on premise?

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organizations are trying to replicate cloud-like capabilities w on-premise infrastructure

Kyle Gene Brown

The best way is to patterns to build content for both private cloud on SCO or #PureApp or for PureApp on SoftLayer.

Kyle Gene Brown

Although you can link public and private cloud together in multiple ways - SCO for instance has a public cloud bridge that allows IaaS connectivity.

seeing a big push for commonality between both sides of hybrid cloud from IBM, Microsoft Azure, VMware vCHS and others. AWS is even discussing hybrid use cases now.

Kyle Gene Brown

The key is to first pick the use cases that you need for both public and private cloud. Cloudbursting? DisasterRecoverAsAService? Dev on the cloud? Start where you have the most value.

From an SMB perspective we see that 50% of those planning new cloud initiatives in 2014 are looking to implement private cloud – that is, using internal infrastructure to deliver on-demand services.

Kyle what's the status of patterns? How mature are they and how much is real v marketing - can you provide some insights?

Kyle Gene Brown

@stu that's true! But I think that AWS will have a harder time than IBM, Microsoft of VMWare since they don't really have an on-prem presence.

Kyle Gene Brown

Another thing is that you have to go where your real costs are lowest. For some cases that is public cloud, but for others private cloud may be cheaper if you have existing unused infrastructure.

David Brakoniecki

If its working, keep it - on prem or not. If its not working, replace it and move it to the cloud. Move Application by Application.

Kyle Gene Brown

Even though you can easily buy a new cloud in one lump with fully integrated products like PureApp you can reuse your existing infrastructure with products like SCO.

David Brakoniecki

A different question: Is it easier to be a smaller company with lesss legacy to move into the cloud?

What are the key organizational opportunities and challenges as they get people, products, and processes #cloud ready and #modern etc..

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Kyle Gene Brown

Key challenge is that your existing organization was built to do things that may not longer apply in the cloud. Take server rack/stack or middleware install - both roles go away!

Kyle Gene Brown

But replaced by higher values roles - writing scripts for automation, building patterns and orchestrations.

Kyle Gene Brown

Good reference for #PureApp is http://bit.ly/1dyJNvV

Organizational structure in PureApplication System operations
Adopting IBM PureApplication System will require changes to your IT organization, simply because many of the challenges that IT organizations typically spend a great deal of effort addressing either do not exist when you are using an Expert Integrate...

well, as you move more apps/workloads to cloud, CIO role evolves to more of a portfolio manager as Box CIO @bhaines0 told us on theCUBE at #BigDataNYC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z73mDiiMjDg&feature=youtu.be

Ben Haines - BigDataNYC 2013 - theCUBE
Ben Haines, Box, at Big Data NYC 2013 with John Furrier and Dave Vellante @thecube #BigDataNYC

Kyle Gene Brown

Also processes change. Approvals may not be needed - but still difficult to handle in current processes - good example is needing holes in firewalls - the bane of some pattern deployments...

Many organizations are using integrated systems to simplify the data center environment and improve the efficiency of IT operations.

Kyle Gene Brown

Your people need to retrain - everyone moves one level up the value chain. Ability to abstract and learn new things becomes critical.

Kyle Gene Brown

We will cover much more in the talk on this at #IbmImpact

Q2: what is the biggest misconception of "integrated systems"; lots of FUD out there. Can you clarify what is "integrated systems"

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Kyle Gene Brown

To IBM Expert Integrated systems have three attributes. Built in expertise, integration by design, and a simplified user experience. You need all 3 to be an integrated system. Pieces parts won't cut it.

David Brakoniecki

@kgb1001001 Those three things are not real clear to me what you mean still. Can you take it down another (jargon-free) level?

Kyle Gene Brown

@dajb2 Simplified: Built in expertise means that we actually code what was always in our redbooks directly into the products. Patterns are a great example of that.

Kyle Gene Brown

@dajb2 Integration by design means that we have already anticipated that you'll connect our products together. So the connections and compatibility checks are built in.

Kyle Gene Brown

@dajb2 Simplified user experience is just that. Get the GUI out of the way of the most common use cases. Just let developers deploy systems. Let the NOC monitor systems. Don't put a lot of things in their way.

David Brakoniecki

@kgb1001001 I like the explanation but it also sounds like table stakes for making a great product.

PureApp is hot how does it integrate in the cloud model with Softlayer and Cloudant for instance

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Kyle Gene Brown

#PureApp is simple because its an all-in-one cloud in a box. Plug it in and you've got a private cloud in 4 hours. Softlayer provides you public cloud bill-as-you-go with no upfront investment.

Kyle Gene Brown

You usually need both. Development on public cloud and Deployment for production on private cloud is common.

Kyle Gene Brown

But that requires the new PureApp on Softlayer "package" on Softlayer to get the patterns compatibility.

Kyle Gene Brown

Cloudant is different but also interesting. It's a NoSQL database that is attractive to new applications that are born on the cloud. Existing applications could also be rewritten to use it, too.

Kyle Gene Brown

So I tend to associate Cloudant more with Softlayer and Bluemix than PureApp. PureApp facilitates Cloud Ready apps - Born on the cloud may fit better in BlueMix.

@kgb1001001 thx that clarifies what I was looking for. There is development boom happening and everyone wants to reach the developer

#PureApp is pre-integrated hw/sw to drop in your data center, plug in & go; cloud is supposed to abstract away deployment complexities so form factor is not an issue for users. so i don't see a play btw #PueApp and #BlueMix. am i missing something?

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sorry, meant #PureApp and Softlayer

pureapp = on premise; softlayer = off premise

... and there are cases where off premise is more interesting than on premise, for instance: you only need an environment for a limited period in time

Kyle Gene Brown

So PureApp ON Softlayer is a special offering where we make it 100% compatible for you to run the same patterns you develop on either platform for your cloud-ready applications.